5 Online Tools to Increase Student Engagement 

INCREASE STUDENT ENGAGEMENT IN THE LIVE CLASSROOM ONLINE

After 12 years of teaching online in both synchronous and asynchronous classrooms, I’ve come to realize that student engagement is the lifeblood on virtual learning. I’ve also learned that creativity is the key to successful student engagement.

As interesting as we believe our lectures to be, nothing substitutes for students’ active participation with the material.

In 2020, there is no end to the amazing technology tools that exist to make learning more exciting. That’s why I’m sharing 5 of my favorite tools to increase student engagement in the synchronous online classroom.

Kahoot

Kahoot is a wildly fun trivia tool that you can use to engage and assess your students. More than 1 billion play Kahoot every year, and it’s easy to see why. Teachers can pre-load questions, and then students guess the correct answers as the clock ticks down. The faster the student answers correctly, the higher the student gets for that round. After each question, Kahoot displays your class leaderboard, along with point totals. Students love fighting for the top spot in the class. You can use Kahoot synchronously or asynchronously, and you can see how students did after the game is complete.

Poll Everywhere

Poll Everywhere is a way to engage every student in the class by introducing a poll for students to respond to in real time. Poll Everywhere offers six question types for you to choose from, including word cloud, open-response, and multiple-choice question types. You control when and how students respond. With Poll Everywhere, you can collect responses online, or you can embed results in your slide presentation. The real-time feedback helps you gauge student understanding, no matter the lass size.

Padlet

Padlet is a beautiful and collaborative way to create something together as a class. Imagine a shared virtual wall where students and teachers alike can add text, pictures, videos, or files. Teachers are able to maintain strict privacy settings so that only the class can contribute to the board. One cool feature I like is that your school can brand Padlet with your school logo.
I can think of a lot of ways Padlet could work in a class:

Brainstorming a topic, where each student needs to contribute ideas to the wall.
Submitting student-created video presentations so that everyone can view all the videos.
Posting an open-ended question where students share their ideas in a less formal way.
In addition to collaborative walls, you could also use Padlet as a way for students to share their e-portfolio.

They also move beyond the virtual wall by having the option for collaborative maps or timelines, opening up more possibilities for visual representation.

Gimkit

Similar to Kahoot, Gimkit is a trivia-style game that students can play directly on their own devices. If students answer questions correctly, they earn a virtual currency that they can “spend” on upgrades and powerups.

After each game, teachers can access detailed reporting on each student’s performance with the questions.

Another fun feature of Gimkit is that students can collaboratively contribute questions, which promotes student buy-in.

Socrative

Socrative is my go-to tool for formative assessments. Socrative allows you to engage and assess students instantly during class with their real-time visualizations of student performance. Student responses populate instantly, and keep updating as more students respond. This empowers you as the teacher to be able to know instantly what questions you need to review with the class.

Socrative assessments come in all forms: quick questions, quizzes, polling, a space race game, and exit tickets. Question types can be formatted as multiple choice, true/false, or open-ended questions. Again, they can be accessed in real-time, or you can look at detailed reports once all students have responded.

These five tools give you the power to spark that student engagement in your asynchronous class. If you want more solutions to solving the problem of online student engagement, watch my webinar: 10 Tips For Increasing Online Student Engagement.

Until next time, Happy teaching!
Andrea